In the wake of last month's fiscal cliff embarrassments, a
growing number of conservative leaders have been pushing for
Republicans to lay off the debt issue and start talking about
something else ... something more positive.

Despite the lofty rhetoric, however, Republicans have offered few
specifics about what their new economic agenda would look like.
What we want to know now is: What exactly are these
"pro-growth" policies that Republicans claim to want to
pursue?

We posed this question to Brad Dayspring, Republican
communications strategist who has been actively pushing a new
"pro-growth" message.

"There are lots of different policies that you can look at,"
said Dayspring, a former aide to Cantor who was recently
named communications director for the National Republican
Senatorial Committee. Specifically, Dayspring
said, Republicans could look at lowering taxes and rolling back
regulations as possible policies that would promote economic
growth.

"Underneath
those policies is the desire to get investors investing again, to
get consumers consuming again, and to get employers hiring
again," he said.

Dayspring's rather limited answers underscore the fundamental
struggle that the GOP faces in coming up with a "positive"
economic agenda:

Conservative ideology has centered around limited
government principles, which almost always see federal power as
the problem, rather than a solution. As a result, it is difficult
for Republicans to come up with any economic solutions that don't
revolve around Federal cuts.

In his New York
Times column today, David Brooks
highlights this problem and calls for a split in the GOP,
imagining a new wing of the party that doesn't ascribe to its
anti-government tenets.

Can current Republicans change their underlying mentality to
adapt to these realities? Intellectual history says no. People
almost never change their underlying narratives or unconscious
frameworks. Moreover, in the South and rural West, where most
Republicans are from, the Encroachment Story has deep historic
and psychological roots. Anti-Washington, anti-urban sentiment
has characterized those cultures for decades.

It’s probably futile to try to change current Republicans. It’s
smarter to build a new wing of the Republican Party, one that can
compete in the Northeast, the mid-Atlantic states, in the upper
Midwest and along the West Coast. It’s smarter to build a new
division that is different the way the Westin is different than
the Sheraton.

The second G.O.P. would tackle both problems at once. It would be
filled with people who recoiled at President Obama’s second
Inaugural Address because of its excessive faith in centralized
power, but who don’t share the absolute antigovernment story of
the current G.O.P.

Brooks' third-party Republicans are clearly a fantasy; moreover,
he probably overestimates the divisions in the GOP.

As Dayspring illustrates, the GOP's recent shift away from
spending cuts toward a "smarter," "pro-growth" message is still
rhetorical, rather than substantive. Republicans fundamentally
believe that the amount of government spending is a major
long-term problem.

"I think we can walk and chew gum at the same
time," Dayspring told Business Insider. "Cutting budgets is a necessity of our
environment, but it's not exactly an aspirational message. I
think most Republicans understand that, I think most House
Republicans understand it. They need to be able to balance the
need to cut budgets with a positive vision for economic
growth."

"The more often we can do that,
the more often we will be equipped to sell our economic message,"
he added.